ABSTRACT
The 2009–2010 recession hit towns and cities across the United States hard, including the city in this vignette—hit especially hard because of its dependence on a single struggling industry. 1 Thousands lost jobs in the wake of plummeting ad revenue, among them employees of the city’s legacy print and broadcast media. The city’s major daily shrunk its newsroom staff by half from 10 years earlier. In the shadows of hard times, small online media efforts sprouted in abandoned coverage areas, including community news sites, partisan bloggers, and specialized non-profit media. Some start-ups included journalists laid off by legacy media. During the depths of the crisis, unemployed and underemployed journalists, bloggers, community news site publishers, and some innovating members of the legacy media began meeting at an all-night midtown restaurant, swapping ideas and brainstorming about possibilities for collaboration and new media efforts. Organizers Skyped in nationally known online innovators to aid the brainstorming, and these meetups fueled a citywide community news site that hosted specialty writers and neighborhood journalists. A number of blogs devoted to covering neighborhood crime appeared around the same time, as legacy media resources for covering crime diminished. The city’s daily paper ratcheted up its own innovation efforts, reaching out to hyperlocal journalists. Facebook and Twitter activity blossomed, with media outlets of all types and sizes corresponding about the city.
